The method was confirmed by the tech blog The Verge, which posted its own video
showing the trick.

Basically, as described by videodebarraquito on his YouTube page,
the method involves going to the emergency call screen, tapping
the power button, dialing the GSM international emergency number
112, canceling, holding down the power button again for a second
or two and hitting "Emergency Call" again.

The phone then unlocks for a moment. Hitting the home button
immediately gives the user access to the contact list, calling
app, voicemail and photos, all without entering the passcode.

We weren't able to duplicate the trick ourselves on a Sprint
iPhone 4S running iOS 6.1.1. That may be because Sprint phones,
which use the CDMA protocol instead of the more widely used GSM,
don't recognize 112 as an emergency number.

North American users may want to see if dialing 911 works
instead.

This isn't the first time the passcode lock has been bypassed on
iOS devices. Similar
locking flaws were discovered in iOS 4 and iOS 5, and for a
time the passcode
lock on an iPad 2 could be bypassed using the magnetic Smart
Cover.

Apple quickly fixed all three bugs with software updates. The
company will probably patch this flaw with an incremental update
within a week or two.

UPDATE: TechNewsDaily was able to replicate the
workaround today on a Verizon Wireless iPhone 5 running iOS 6.1.
But doing so wasn't easy — it took four or five tries before it
worked.